Disconnected Oceans and the issues faced by Naval Units.

Well i will likely always be playing on planets with more water, ship fetish and all.


And floating tanks seem very slow, i seriously would disagree with this and hope its not in game. Hovercraft however i am in full support of, nice and squishy.

If we wanna get all historical now, there was a Royal Navy destroyer in both world wars and both times it survived. Of course it was called Petard. I really like destroyers man

There should be a Petard destroyer in PA. Sadly I didn't have 5k bucks for such a thing :geek:

I don't see what isn't "real" about walking boats. They sail just fine, the destroyer is one of the best t2 ships in the game too. It just so happens to be able to walk up on land if it needs to.

It looks silly and is impractical.




This does not, and is not.





Again i'm just a ship purist, but the issue is already solved by watery planets.

I find it was very practical. I wish all my ships could walk up on land.

and give all land units floats so that they can sail on water and don't forget to give everything wings so they can fly if need be....
where was the distinction between land,air and naval again?

as said before, build as much naval for a body of water as you would expect to need for its size and don't try large scale naval warfare on desert planets.
the idea of building water passages as least for short connections sounds nice too (for that the relation between ship build costs and canal build costs would have to fit somewhat)

1+ ^^^^^^^^^^

Honestly, the way the setup was executed on the Salem(in SupCom1/FA) was very well done, you had a great general purpose Naval unit, but when you got around to trying to send it up on to land you had this slow, easily avoided unit, the Salem wasn't useful because it could fight on land, rather it was because it could Cross land, and it was useful because it could CROSS land. It was still a Naval unit first and foremost.

Now, obviously just mindlessly copying it for PA is not a smart idea, likely if there were a legged ship it would need to be fairly specialized so that a force comprised only of this unit wouldn't be very useful when compared to a fully fleshed out fleet, and exactly what needs to be done in that regard will depend on a lot of context in regard to the rest of Naval, and to some degree, Land/Air units/gameplay as well.

Actually, an interesting use for legs would be on a Torpedo focused Boat, this could make things much easier if you get forced out of a particular body of water and kept out by Subs, particularly if you already had some Naval production at another body of water.

Mike

Avoiding subs was indeed a favorite application of the legs for me.

MY BOAT HAS LEGS, YOUR SUBMARINES ARE INVALID!

I prefer of the idea of making boats fly. Just set up a platform in front of the land and speed up with the boat and simply fly over that portion of land into the sea on the other side.

Totally awesome, that's what we're aiming for right?

Hmm, very interesting. I can compromise to have one legged ship that is useless as a combat unit on land but useful for crossing land bridges. However i am still really not in support of floating tanks, this makes tanks too easy to mass and just move to the enemy instead of building transport ships or transport aircraft. It also means they can combat naval units too well.


I don't know really, Uber could pull it off.

BUT i cannot shake the feeling it just looks too silly.

I don't actually see what should be wrong with a ship that could convert into an aircraft just like one that can walk on land or turn into a sub. Seeing it sprout jets and lift off would, in fact, be awesome.

That's where i draw the line, why not just mass flying ships!


No.
No.
No.


Seriously that would just erk me so badly, you CANNOT have a flying ship, its just not a thing. WAY to heavy.


I know its Ubers decision, but seriously? FLYING SHIPS? No.

Obviously it's weight and elevated position would be somewhat of a liability but the maneuverability would be just swell.

My entire point is that you can't paint mechanics like that Black and White, Hover/Amphibious units are in the end not really any different then my Legged torpedo Boat idea, they have Pros and Cons that allow them to integrate well(assuming good design was behind them of course) with the other units that interact with without any issues as you describe them.

Again, you can't look at it in such a "Black and White" mindset, a unit designed around such and ability could make sense. You're just stuck on a a singular, and exact definition, which is really just a disservice to yourself really, Naval units don't all have to be Capital Ships, you also have boats platforms, hover/amphibious units, Seaplanes and more. Heck even a Bot that walks along the sea floor is technically a naval unit.

There are still going to be those large and meaty Capital ships, but there are so many other options and variety to be explored.

Mike

Ok fine. I agree.

But still, flying ships... I'm sorry but every time i saw it i would just start laughing.




As for the rest yeah OK. I guess i like to paint things like this black and white.




As for flying ships, not jets as i hold that's silly. Perhaps a ship could deploy a zepplin air bag over itself and begin to rise!

Now i would accept that, it is much better than jet wings fixed to boats.

Seriously, not all Naval units are Capital Ships, if you don't internalize that you're going to be disappointed with the naval units.

Also the Contradiction of saying Jets are silly, but proposing a zeppelin instead is to me mind-boggling. if I were to design a "Flying Capitol Ship", the first place idea that jumps to mind for propulsion is the UEF Gunship designs from SupCom1/FA.

Flying does not necessarily mean it'll be preforming barrel rolls and loop de loops, larger ships that 'fly' would follow a similar profile to legged ships smaller naval units. Smaller Boats might just be a V-44 or a Chinook with the wings/rotors tucked away and shouldn't be viewed as flying ships for the same reasons that Hover units shouldn't be seen as floating tanks.

Yes, between Legged and Flying, Flying is the more "out there" of the two, but if the mechanics and balance works out, isn't that the important part? The rest of the Design falls into place neatly, the visuals will naturally accommodate those features, most likely to the point where they would easily stand out form other capital ships.

Keep an open mind and look at things from multiple angles, there are lots of factors to consider when doing unit design/mechanics, most of it is less about the unit/mechanic itself and more so focuses on it's effects on everything else.

Mike

Of course, i expect it to be from patrol boats to aircraft carriers, but i thought we were tackling large and expensive ships which need a method to move from lake to lake.


Zepplins had a good ability to hold up mass, they also can stay stationary. Jets require constant movement. As ships can stay stationary it might be easier to code if they retained that ability. (Not programmer, just an assumption)

Anyway yeah i guess it all comes down to implementation and chemistry with the other units.







On the topic of crazy boat ideas, how about a big flat-deck ship that has a launchpad on it to deploy orbital units, something like this could evade detection when a stationary launch site might be spotted easier.

Vertical hover like the Hydra in GTA San Andreas should be easily possible if you're concerned about movement

When units(anything you build really) can be easily reclaimed and rebuilt, nothing NEEDS the ability to be moved from lake to lake, frankly the idea of building these large expensive ships in small lakes is ridiculous already, it's like building a large, non-amphibious land army on a small island, you might build some as a defensive counter measure, but not an army's worth, you'd focus on the Amphibious units or just straight up go naval.

Honestly this all sounds a bit like looking for a problem to fix, or fixing something that shouldn't be a problem to begin with.

You're thinking Jet PLANES when I'm talking about Jet Engines, which can be pointed downward to produce a similar effect to helicopters, think of the Harrier but instead of also using them fly normally(because cramming enough of a lift surface into a boat is going to most likely compromise the ability to do anything but fly) they would primarily provide vertical with some lateral movement, basically slow helicopters when jet engines instead of rotors.

How is that crazy? We already do that today(thought mostly with smaller payloads) because launching from the Equator is cheaper(from my understanding).

Mike